


The Lilac Path

by MoonbeamMadness



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Bikinis, Cardan's tail being its own sentient being, F/M, Romance, Smut, water play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:59:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29616732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonbeamMadness/pseuds/MoonbeamMadness
Summary: Cardan's curiosity finally wins out. Where is his Jude disappearing off to?
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Comments: 2
Kudos: 115





	The Lilac Path

Cardan had realised after several months playing King that he wasn’t nearly as useless or as unobservant as his brother Balekin had often, and liberally implied. Young, definitely, and very inexperienced, but he _was_ learning fast to play the game of court. Honestly, it wasn’t quite so different to his old life where even his closest circle of friends were vipers - his days spent redirecting their venom toward more appropriate prey. Or as it turned out, towards someone better suited to withstand it.

Cardan’s court was very much the same but on a grander scale and he was swiftly learning to navigate their treacherous seas. Who spoke to whom behind closed doors. Which among them would do simply that and nothing more. Who was all talk and who might spur to action. It wasn’t all that hard really, and Jude was skilled in court politics in a way that Cardan was still coming to grasps with. It may have been a pit of vipers, but she was the Queen of all serpents. _His_ Queen he’d heard Roach refer to her as.

It was truthfully easy when they both played to their strengths. Fear had swiftly become her tool and Cardan was learning that underestimation was his. It was truly amazing what you could glean with a goblet of wine in hand, looking bored, simply because no one thought you were watching them.

True, the drunken fool at one point had not been an act, but times had changed and Jude had ensured he would adjust with them. Intoxicated though he might sometimes look, he’d barely had more than a glass in weeks. _This_ was no time to be caught off-guard, weak and vulnerable, and for all his aloof comments, Cardan valued his life above _almost_ everything. It was truly unfortunate that there were no shortage of willing hands waiting to snatch it from him.

Puppet master though his Jude might have been, she was also his protector. His assassin and guard. Adviser. They _needed_ each other. Him to wear the crown and her to keep the crown and the skull under it affixed to his shoulders. And Cardan trusted her in a way he could scarcely begin to describe. Despite the fact that she was the only one under the hill capable of outright lies, she happened to also be the only one he felt would ever tell him the truth. Faerie folk often found clever ways to deceive simply because it amused them - he certainly did, but he knew that a lie from Jude held purpose and until such a time that Oak could make his return, her lies would have a beneficial focus.

Their lives were inextricably tied. So when she began disappearing every Tuesday morning, just before the dawn of the summer sun, Cardan felt an urge to discover what it was that dragged her from her bed and through the not so discreetly concealed passage he knew lay hidden in her room.

Anxious and perhaps even excited, he sat by the adjoining door between the chambers, waiting patiently for the telltale squeak of her dresser. The smell of lilac soap as she passed close by the door - soft footsteps on very old wood. Then there was the low sounding scrape of stone shifting, and gingerly he turned the handle.

As he’d expected, Jude was gone.

Cardan gave the room a quick cursory examination - it was rare he was permitted such an opportunity to snoop. Jude was rightfully secretive - laundered and cleaned her own chambers. There was only a single key to her hallway door and the dividing arch between his and her rooms could only be opened by the occupants. She’d told him it was a way out if he found himself trapped. He could find her and be assured no one could follow him once he made it passed those dividing doors.

Cardan ran a finger through the bristle of her hairbrush left discarded on the nightstand - the only thing that seemed out of place amid the stifling order. Jude was meticulous. Where his bedroom floor was home to discarded shirts and items of clothing, all patiently waiting for the servants to clear away, hers was neat, orderly. Adopted though she was, she was every inch the daughter of a soldier. Hard muscle and religious routine. Cardan wasn’t surprised to see her walls and cabinets adorned with small blades and whetstones. Oils and strips of leather. No perfumes or makeups or jewels. For Jude danger must have warred with beauty as he noted they’d been placed on display. As though they brought her just as much pleasure to look at.

She was a curious creature. Hate it though he might, Cardan could see where his attraction to her came from. Maddening though it was to think, there was no one in Elfhame quite like her.

Perhaps she wasn’t the _only_ one confused by the difference between beauty and danger?

He traced his fingers along the worn seam of the wall he knew she had to have been using to leave her chambers - there were only two walls unaccounted for, one of those was a fireplace frequently used while the other was bare, and after quick examination he discovered the small lever half concealed beneath the bust of a bird shaped lamp.

Stone shifted and with a careful push Cardan emerged into a dark corridor of earth and stone…and lilac. He inhaled deeply and smiled, eyes fluttering. _There you are_. Bracing his hands against the stone he followed the lingering smell of her as it winded along the passageways for a few hundred meters, sloping down and back up and curving left and right before breaking out into an overgrown garden under the morning sun.

Cardan came to an immediate halt. From the look of it, the courtyard had been left to its own devices for centuries. The trees had grown beyond their enclosures, and the creeping vines had torn the only stone path into rubble and strangled the naked statues flanking the archway into it - breaking the arms and horns of whatever creatures guarded the entrance to the garden. They weren’t remotely recognizable in their current condition.

He glanced up, and though it was sheltered by the steep stone walls - the walls of the court under the hill, not a single one had so much as a window that overlooked this place. It was entirely secluded. Likely a retreat for the Kings of old. Some place for them to enjoy the open air in privacy and solitude. Somewhere prying eyes wouldn’t find them.

The path was rugged and Cardan found his toes catching periodically on the roots of the willows and the snaking brambles as he followed the scent, a new sound of water luring him out into the sun where he found a glistening, rippling spring fueled from deep underground.

The sun was blinding, so much so that in his effort to block it out, his squinting eyes almost missed her treading water in the pool, but he saw her head break the surface, arms and shoulders following before she disappeared again beneath and Cardan was greeted to a breathtaking sight of her almost bare back - her wet, toned thighs - before she vanished again completely.

He was too mesmerized to feel bad about the mouthful of water she inhaled when she finally spotted him on the bank of the pool, staring at her, blinking stupidly.

“What the hell are you doing here?” She demanded, having coughed up a lung full of liquid.

“I wondered where you were disappearing off to, so I followed you,” He said simply. Truthfully unashamed by that. Her safety was his, wasn’t it? Right or wrong, he genuinely felt he deserved to know what she got up to when her hobbies included assassination and espionage.

Jude didn’t say anything, frowning deeply as she bobbed in the water, waves lapping her chin as she kept afloat. Cardan took a moment to look around the garden and smiled absently. It was a wild place, more so than even the untouched woods outside the palace. As though the plants growing here had revolted in their confinement - become violent in their need for freedom. Even the weeping willow, normally so gentle in appearance was a twisted, angry looking thing swallowing the waters edge.

Cardan loved it, instantly.

He watched Jude’s face soften, her eyes traveling down to his legs and the tail swishing excitedly at his feet. Cardan had long since given up trying to force it to obey with willpower alone - short of the belt he used to keep it under control, it was as wild as this garden.

“Why would you follow me at all?”

“As much as you need me to rule, I need you to keep my head affixed to my shoulders,” He answered.

“You were worried for me?” Jude let a small, almost tender smile pull at her lips but it was brief.

Cardan felt his blood burn. Embarrassed that Jude would dare voice her question so plainly. He couldn’t bring himself to answer, because it would be the truth, and the truth was unbearable. _Yes_ , yes he had been worried. Though _not_ for her safety. Despite the revulsion many faerie felt at the mere sight of her in court, not one was quite so stupid to make an attempt on her so soon after her defeat of Madoc. Cardan wagered that the more experienced faerie were simply going to wait for old age to claim her, rather than take the chance at direct confrontation.

Jude sighed and lay back in the water when she realised he wouldn’t respond, floating aimlessly away from him and toward the farthest shore.

“They call this the Concubines Garden. Roach told me that an old King a very long time ago gifted it to a human woman he’d taken a liking to, so she could enjoy the sun, but he sealed it up when she took her own life.”

Jude didn’t blink as she told him. Recited it as calmly as a report on the weather. Absent of feeling. She was no stranger to death. No stranger to tragedy. She sounded… _bored_ by how ordinary a story it was.

Cardan curiously wondered when Jude Duarte had became more faerie than Human. Was it a gradual thing, or did she wake up one morning with immortal marble and fire in place of bone and blood?

Unused to its rays, Cardan found the sun was far too warm for his liking and he felt the first bead of sweat run down his back beneath his sleeping shirt, tickling the base of his still excitable tail as it traveled south. The coolness of the night was unquestionably preferable. Without thinking he pulled off his shirt and pants and slipped into the water where a startled Jude gave an indignant squawk, covering her chest with both arms and treading back onto the shore. Cardan froze when he spied what she was wearing. Thin white patches of fabric front and back, tied with only fragile string on her hips, over her chest she wore similar, though her arms were doing a good job of concealing the bulk of her chest. He scanned what he could see, enraptured by the sight of visible muscle. Legs, stomach, calves. The body of a warrior, not a soft courtesan.

“You Humans have the most bizarre concept of modesty. You may as well be naked,” He breathed a curt laugh at the deep red creeping up her golden cheeks. Faerie were generally unconcerned with concepts like modesty.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Jude complained.

“More than you could _possibly know_.”

It wasn’t the honesty in his words that so caught her off guard, rather the directness to them. There was no clever avoidance. No word play. Cardan spoke plainly, his eyes meeting hers before they trailed back down the length of her skin without shame, only a longing that seemed to make her chew at her lips to see.

She dropped her hands, wiping the damp palms against her thighs and Cardan grinned.

“I approve,” He said, appraising her attire. “There _is_ some pleasure to be had in what those scraps of fabric so carefully refuse to put on show,” He smirked, filled with a kind of perverse joy to see her nipples standing attentive through the wet fabric. This was as close as he’d ever come to seeing her naked and he wanted nothing more right then than to be able to reach out a hand and tug on one of those strings, just to see if it would be undone as easy as it appeared - and it looked as though a coarse wind blowing in the wrong direction would be enough to relieve her of the satin slips of white.

“Well, I don’t approve of the way you’re staring.”

“You can always leave,” Was he so desperate to see her toned backside as she turned that he’d give up the chance to see more? He may have been feeling strangely, suddenly desperate, but certainly not _that_ foolish.

Jude didn’t move away. Not an inch.

“Then come back in the water?” He held out his hand, beckoning her in again.

“I fear an ulterior motive, Cardan,” Jude tutted, as she tried but failed to keep a burgeoning grin at bay.

“I won’t deny one, but you shouldn’t fear it, ” He admitted, enjoying the easy play of words between them. Beautiful, intelligent, dangerous. Was it because she was mortal - because it would _fade_ that made her beauty more radiant, her danger more pronounced. He’d heard that threat made one desperate and vicious - wild and unpredictable. Was that what it was to be mortal? Was that why Jude Duarte consumed his thought like she did? Because he would never have these moments again. Because when life was so fleeting, her kind would claw recklessly for it and it thrilled him. Her defiance. Her spine.

Energy seemed to course through him and suddenly Cardan was overcome by the taste of her, the feeling of her hands in his hair - a sting of cold steel at his throat that made him harden. The sensation was nothing new. Hours spent at meetings, unable to concentrate on anything other than the desire to banish the room and angle her over the meeting table. That she chewed those lips as she waded back in the water made his heart skip excitedly in his chest. It made him heat, despite the chill of the pool. He was glad that his hips weren’t very visible above the surface.

“So what is this ulterior motive?”

“I was planning on seducing you into complete nakedness,” Cardan teased, eyes dark beneath the wild wet locks of hair sticking to his face.

“Easier done when your eyeliner isn’t rolling down your cheeks, my _King,”_ Jude laughed mockingly and Cardan snorted, knowing very well how he likely looked. He wiped a hand over his face and ducked beneath the surface, washing away the last of the black from around his eyes.

“I think I’ll manage somehow.”

Jude paused and he absently realised this was the first time she’d seen his face bare of its gold and black powders, its look of calculated vanity. It was the first time she’d seen him stripped of that mask - the mask he’d worn so long he could scarcely tell you what he looked like without it. He let himself drift closer but stopped as Jude splashed him, grinning.

“Don’t think I can’t see that thing from here…” She was still smiling as her eyes flickered to the surface of the water between them. “… You and your little _problem_ can stay over there.”

“And here I was hoping you’d help me?” The words came tumbling out and he had no idea when he’d given permission for them to pass his lips.

Cardan suddenly felt a throbbing, aching need. There was something about this place that spurred a half forgotten memory to the surface. About a King betrayed by his own enchantments. He felt power in the water here and a wilder than normal recklessness surging in his blood. He could see something similar reflected back in Jude’s gaze as it seemed the distance from her grew shorter.

“I think you like teasing me,” He said, splashing her back, his desire for her growing by the second. Her hair dripped water down her face and chest. Begging his eyes to follow.

Jude smiled, laughing without care and it was the sweetest thing he’d ever heard, free and unburdened by the weight she always seemed to carry. Something he’d imagined hearing only in his dreams. Maybe this _was_ a dream. If it was, it was so far the best he’d had in a long while.

“Better than stalking,” She taunted.

“I most certainly do _not_ stalk you. Occasional curiosity not withstanding,” He smirked sending a wave of water her way and grinning like a fool when she shrieked with laughter.

They continued like that, for how long Cardan couldn’t be certain, circling closer and closer till they were close enough to touch. Laughing, taunting, teasing each other. Not enemies. Not rivals or reluctant friends. Something else he hadn’t spared a thought to consider.

Jude moved to splash him again but he caught her wrist gently and brought it to his mouth, leaving a kiss on the soft skin underside. The feel of her so close, the warmth of her skin, it made Cardan tremble. It made him want to sink his teeth into her flesh. To hold her tight enough that perhaps she might vanish beneath his skin. There to remain a part of him till eternity broke and the sky fell. Jude paused, sensing a change but never looked away and didn’t pull back, her eyes fluttering closed as he drew her closer, peppering the skin down the inside of her arm and moving along till he was at her shoulder, his breath warming her neck

“This is a mistake,” Jude whispered, exposing her throat. They both seemed so far from themselves. Or rather, far from the images they’d made for themselves. The King and Queen of deceit, stripped bare. Cardan felt like the water was draining all that doubt and pain away. Taking the lies and drowning them in the blackness below.

“My favorite kind,” The answer came in the form of teeth dragging up the column of her neck, till his nose was brushing her jaw and her breath had turned ragged and hot.

Jude leaned into him as he wrapped his arms around her, fingers zeroing in on those neat little loops of string between her shoulder blades and at her neck. He felt her nails press into his back returning the embrace as the little garment floated off to the side, like flower petals on the surface of the water.

Chaste pecks became eager in a moment and Cardan felt her quake against him as he dragged his tongue along her throat, claiming her lips as she opened her mouth to moan. Soft and demanding, he felt her tongue brush his own and unwilling to suffer any longer, his hands found her hips and brought her to bare against him. Cardan let her feel his desire. Let his body tell her what he’d been unable to voice. She pulled at his hair, making a guttural noise of want in his ear - low and carnal.

He plucked at the strings hugging her sides and hummed in satisfaction when another strip of white drifted to the surface.

“I’ll beg if I must.” Cardan pulled back to whisper in her ear.

The sensation of grinding himself against her was indescribable but it was nowhere close to the satisfaction of her wrapping her legs around his waist, undulating in response. Nothing at all between them now.

Cardan knew from the boasting of Locke that Jude was little more than an inexperienced maid in these matters but not an ounce of it showed in the way she moved, rocking against him. Shock must have showed in his eyes as dear Jude reached down between them and took hold, stroking him carefully several times beneath the water. Cardan could help the way his hips bucked in her hand. Couldn’t stop his tail from wrapping its way around her thigh as his grip on her hips tightened and he let out a low noise of pleasure.

“Kings don’t beg,” Jude hushed against his lips, kissing him again, gasping as his hands moved to cup her breasts, squeezing softly.

There was magic in the water, Cardan was slowly realising. Power, relaxing muscles and lowering inhibitions, but he was already too far gone to care what it might mean afterward, when they rightfully came to their senses. Jude was correct, this was a mistake that they may grow to regret.

One arm moving around her waist he angled her back, teasing the wet, pimpled skin as she shuddered and moaned in his grip, his mouth continuing when his fingers stopped, hands now moving lower, slowly slipping between her legs as she cried ou. Cardan took his time to explore her, finding her very responsive to touch as he circled the swollen pearl his clever fingers discovered. Massaging the flesh until she stiffened, the back of her head hitting the water with a splash as she finally crested the edge of pleasure.

He dug his fingers into her rear and guided her against him. Tight heat engulfing every inch as the water around them took the bulk of her weight. Jude’s head tipped forward onto his shoulder when he moved against her. The length of him slipping out and slowly gliding back in.

“It’s… the water,” He rasped, breathless between slow, methodical thrusts.

“It’s…not just the water,” Jude breathlessly replied, her nose brushing his as she met his eyes. The spring only fed what was already there. Forcing them to confront an attraction they’d ignored. “Why did you really follow me?”

“I thought you’d… found a lover,” Cardan finally admitted out loud, teeth nipping at her bottom lip as he’d seen her do herself. Jude smiled in response, kissing him silent before he could say anything else.

“ _Fool_ ,” She whispered.

Unable to deepen his thrusts as he wanted, Cardan leaned back and maneuvered them toward the waters edge, hoisting Jude up into the grass where he finally managed to garner a good look at her as she blushed against the sea of green tickling his shins. In the light of the sun she didn’t look as she had. Not Faerie, not mortal. Hair the colour of spring bark threaded with gold. She looked like a creature of the divine. The effigy of a god of summer. As ephemeral as the seasons themselves and every sliver as beautiful. He took one of her knees and hooked it over his shoulder slipping back inside her with a relieved sigh, the walls of her clamping down on him in response content to be joined again. Feeling as though it was suddenly his duty to worship this moment - worship _her_ , knowing that they too would pass like the summer sun.

Cardan drove himself against her, over an over until most of the water from the spring had dried and was replaced with sweat - slicking every inch of skin between them. He breathed in the lilac until he was positive that it would never fade from his memory. That in the centuries to come, when his Jude was likely nothing but dust and dried bone, the scent would bring him back to this place, this moment. He brought his mouth down on the tip of a pert nipple and with the barest touch of teeth Jude jerked against him, toes curling as she cried out his name. So glorious a sight it was that Cardan fell straight after her, his tail slapping hard against the water as pleasure robbed him temporarily of his senses and turned his limbs to jelly. He all but collapsed, exhausted and overcome with the need to sleep. But it was the burn of the sun on his exposed back that prompted him to eventually move from where he lay, still half inside a panting Jude - the woman too dazed by the whole event to utter a word though he noted her eyes searching the waters surface for her curious underthings.

A thought finally struck his clearing mind and Cardan felt the barest caress of cold, clammy shame.

“I’m sorry I followed you,” He whispered to her. Understanding now that the person she’d been secretly coming here to meet had actually been herself - not a lover, not a spy or another member of court. It had been the woman imprisoned behind the mask, visible only in the reflection of the pool. The person she couldn’t be beyond this garden. Even in her chambers, there was still the chance of ears at the door, eyes at the peephole. It wasn’t outside the realms of reason to consider the possibility that the weapons and knifes, the crossbows and armour in her room were all part of the illusion.

Jude’s eyes met his, squinting against the sun she ran her fingers across his jaw. Her eyes glinting mischievously, breaking his suddenly somber expression to one of immediate paranoia.

“I’m not.” Her finger tips traced his bottom lip and she smiled dangerously. “Now, you can get yourself back in that water and find Vivi’s chanel bikini and just maybe I’ll consider showing you the way back to our rooms.”

Cardan was instantly imagining what she’d look like against his sheets.

“I find your terms agreeable,” He said, eyes narrowed as he disappeared back into the pool, swimming for the far shore, his tail splashing Jude as he went. Her laughter chasing him through the water.


End file.
